How Small Businesses Can Build An Online Presence

The Yellow Pages Are Irrelevant:

I recently participated in a study conducted by Yelp, an online urban city guide that helps people find cool places to eat, shop, drink, relax and play, based on the informed opinions of a vibrant and active community of locals in the know. The survey was presented to gauge how business owners feel about yellow page phone books in the digital age. Over 3500 business owners participated in this survey.

The Questions

1. Are Yellow pages relevant to your business? Only 24% said yes. This was perhaps the most telling answer to the entire survey. If that question were asked of the same people just a few years ago, they would have thought you were crazy. Over the last 5 years, I have slowly migrated away from all Yellow pages advertising. At one point, I was spending over $1000 a month in three separate books for my two retail store locations. Why three books? As many of you know, there is more than one player and in order to hit all of my target audience, I had to list my stores in three separate books. Today, I spend $0 in the Yellow pages and allocate all of my advertising dollars to online media.
2. How many times per month do you rely on a Yellow page phone book to find a local business? Only 10% of the business owners use phone books more than once a month. I couldn’t tell you the last time I used one. In fact, I don’t know if we have them anymore? Do you?
3. What percentage do you think your customers find your business using Yellow pages? 90% said they think less than 25% of their customers find them using the Yellow pages. We started polling our new customers about 5 years ago and the information that I was receiving is what gave me the courage to drop the Yellow pages. If you are still using them, I strongly suggest you start polling your first time customers how they found your business.

The Conclusion

Business owners have clearly observed the shrinking relevance of yellow page phone books. As we continue to move away from printed phone books, online and mobile directories will continue to grow as the customers choice for local business information.